Netflix’s Terminator Zero is disarmingly good. The franchise has seen better days, and with Genisys and Dark Fate suggesting that the appeal of this particular war between man and machine is waning, it’s easy to dismiss any new Terminator-related project. But Zero, a slick, brutal anime that elevates its premise with earnest ruminations on family, fate, and whether humanity is capable of being saved, could be a turning point.
Zero initially flip-flops between 1997 and 2022, showing us the contrast between the world that was and the one that will be. That’s nothing wild or new for Terminator fare – the whole franchise kicked off with a flashforward, after all – but critical to this specific story. Resistance fighter Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno) travels to 1997 hoping to find the brilliant Malcolm Lee (André Holland), who is preparing to launch his answer to Skynet: Kokoro, a rival AI voiced by an outstanding Rosario Dawson. One tiny wrinkle, though: A Terminator (Timothy Olyphant) is also searching for Malcolm. Malcolm believes Kokoro can protect humanity, but he’s also fearful of her potential. He’s running out of time, though. Murderous robots and neglected children close in on him, and Kokoro, a being of infinite knowledge, is skeptical that humans are worth protecting at all. (None of this goes well, on the off-chance you were optimistic.)
Terminator Zero’s exploration of morality is ultimately superficial, but because its gaze is fixed primarily on Malcolm Lee’s family and legacy, it counters this shallowness with painful, complex, messy dynamics that reward fans hoping for something beyond the franchise’s usual fare. Lee’s oldest son, Kenta (Armani Jackson), is the closest the writers come to driving home humanity’s ugliness. Fiercely, rigidly anti-robot, Kenta is a time bomb, and the show never clarifies whether or not his nanny secretly being a benevolent cyborg complicates his stance. We see a whole lot of robots being awful, but not nearly enough about human failings, which weakens the moral ambiguity on which Terminator Zero hangs everything.
Initially, this quasi-profundity might feel like a send-up of the Terminator franchise’s recent MO. Showrunner Mattson Tomlin isn’t shy about asking whether or not humanity deserves to survive, but he does shy away from a meaningful interrogation of these ideas. He keeps the dialogue between the humans and the cyborgs fairly surface-level, flirting with questions of survival without truly delving into them. Foregoing depth for streamlined storytelling isn’t a flaw – at least, it doesn’t have to be. But Tomlin and the writers do enough philosophical setup to make their ultimate refusal to commit detrimental. Terminator Zero ends on pro-human platitudes (we love, so we live!) that does disservice its characters, themes, and world-building, and it’s difficult not to imagine what this could’ve been if it went deeper.
Luckily, Zero is largely more invested in its characters than its message. Malcolm is a tormented knot of a man who just wants to do right by his family, while his children, namely Kenta, wrestle with their anger at his negligence. The Lees are far more intriguing and representative of Zero’s deftness with its interpersonal dynamics than Eiko; to her disadvantage – but to Terminator Zero’s advantage – the story quickly loses interest in her. She may be our Sarah Connor/Kyle Reese figure here, but she doesn’t leave as much of an impression as either classic Terminator protagonist.
Then we have the Terminator itself. Zero keeps to the franchise’s insistence that its titular robot be as frightening, formidable, and uncompromising as (in)humanly possible – and it nails this. The cyborg plaguing the people and timelines of this particular story doesn’t physically distinguish himself from the T-1000 – with the possible exception of his crossbow-forearm – but as the muscle for Zero’s big, scary, existential musings, he’s ruthlessly effective. (And that intimidation factor is intensified by Michelle Birsky and Kevin Henthorn’s instrumental score.)
